James Tabacchi, President and CEO of Matrix Applications, LLC and South Street Securities Holdings, Inc. will be a panelist for the upcoming "ZeroBeta Spotlight Episode 2: Central Clearing: Addressing Clearing Capacity & Market Structure Challenges" Webinar on Friday, March 28th, 2025 at 11:00 AM EST.
To register, please visit: https://app.livestorm.co/zerobeta/zerobeta-spotlight-episode-2
The next episode of the ZeroBeta Spotlight dives into the critical questions surrounding clearing capacity and the optimal market structure in order to understand the impact that the SEC's central clearing mandate will have on market participants. The live event will help treasury market participants gain actionable insights for navigating the evolving clearing landscape in order to stay ahead of these critical market developments.
James M. Tabacchi, President & Chief Executive Officer of South Street Securities Holdings, Inc.
Mr. Tabacchi directly oversees all aspects of the business, including strategy, credit, market and liquidity risk, infrastructure, technology and clearing, compliance, finance, accounting, and controls at South Street Securities. Today, the company remains one of the largest independent repo dealers and has added asset management of an Agency Mortgage REIT, an MBS TBA derivative dealer franchise, a fintech fixed income processing company, and last year, an equity sec lending business. In 2018, he also invested in and continues to mentor a Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (DVOSB) and minority owned broker dealer called AmeriVet, which underwrites and distributes corporate debt and equity. Prior to founding South Street, Mr. Tabacchi joined Citicorp/Citibank in 1980. Over a period of 20 years he worked in various customer interface and business head positions within the Investment, Corporate, and Consumer Banking Divisions. In addition to his Board responsibilities at South Street, ACM Trust REIT, and AmeriVet, Mr. Tabacchi is Chairman of the Board of the Independent Dealer and Trader Association (IDTA) and is a member of BNYM’s GSS Industry Advisory Council. In 2021, Mr. Tabacchi was elected to the DTCC Board of Directors. Mr. Tabacchi's FINRA certifications include Series 7, 63, 27 and 24.
Varuna Wijesundera, CEO & Co-Founder of ZeroBeta
Varuna is a capital markets technology leader with over fifteen years of experience in TradFi and DeFi, specializing in innovative implementations and large-scale transformation projects. As CEO of ZeroBeta, he oversees strategic direction, product innovation, and business growth, ensuring the company delivers cutting-edge, cloud-native solutions for risk and collateral management. With expertise across the capital markets lifecycle and experience in equities, crypto, fixed income, repos, exchange-traded, and OTC derivatives, he works closely with clients, regulators, and industry leaders to drive adoption, enhance operational efficiency, and address emerging challenges in capital markets.
Previously, at the London Stock Exchange Group, he led technology transformation for LCH’s equities and fixed-income risk businesses, enhancing its competitive edge. His experience extends across major financial institutions, including exchanges (LSE, TMX), clearinghouses, brokerages, and buy-side firms in global financial centers in the USA, Canada, the UK, Europe, and Hong Kong.
Ketan B. Patel, Head of Financial Markets Risk Analysis at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Ketan B. Patel is a policy advisor and head of financial markets risk analysis in the Financial Markets Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He is responsible for analyzing the public policy and financial stability implications of risks in financial markets and financial market infrastructures.
Before joining the Chicago Fed, he was chief risk officer of OTC Clearing and deputy group risk officer of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX). He led a division of more than 50 risk-management professionals across China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UK. Prior to HKEX, Patel worked at CME Group. Additionally, he served as vice chair of CCP12 and co-chair of the CCP12 Risk Working Group.
During his career, he has managed risk through several stressed market events, including the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2015 Chinese stock market collapse, the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the global financial crisis of 2008–09, the Refco bankruptcy, and the Sentinel Investments collapse. He has also led several post-trade initiatives (such as HKEX’s Next Gen Risk Models of VaR and Stress Testing, Stock Connect, and Bond Connect), established new central counterparties of OTC Clear HK Ltd and LME Clear, and developed the quantitative modeling and risk policy teams in the Risk Research Department at CME.
Daniel Austin, Head of US Markets Policy & Regulation at AIMA
Daniel joined AIMA in October 2021 as Director of U.S. Policy and Regulation and now serves as Head of U.S. Markets Policy and Regulation. In this role, he helps lead and manage strategy and execution of AIMA’s U.S. regulatory and policy work and advocacy, with an emphasis on markets-related items. Prior to joining AIMA, Daniel served as Counsel then Senior Counsel of Delta Strategy Group, a Washington, D.C.-based regulatory consulting and government affairs firm, where he provided regulatory and legislative consultation and guidance to a diverse set of market participants, including hedge funds, principal trading firms and financial technology companies. He previously worked in the Office of the General Counsel at the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. Daniel graduated magna cum laude from the University of Mississippi School of Law and holds a B.A. in journalism from the University of Mississippi. He is admitted to practice law in Virginia.
Matrix Applications is a New York-based fintech service bureau that offers a suite of collateral management, margining and clearing systems for institutional fixed income trading and equities securities lending. We are a team of capital markets and systems professionals delivering financial technology solutions to institutional firms since 2000. We work hands-on with our clients to identify an optimal mix of services to best fit their needs, from systems to back-office operations assistance. With in-house and offshore developers, we provide our clients with the right solution at the right price. Comprised of industry veterans and financial professionals, we leverage our extensive technical experience, a deep network across the finance industry and a team of ops, regulatory and legal gurus to deliver bespoke managed services for firms big and small.
South Street Securities Holdings, Inc. operates through its wholly owned subsidiaries. Affiliates include South Street Securities LLC, a FINRA and SIPC member, who holds a FICC Tier 1 membership and is focused on repo dealer financing US Treasuries, Agency MBS, TBA mortgage origination hedging and equity finance. Matrix Applications, LLC, a technology and back-office services company, AmeriVet Securities, Inc., a FINRA and SIPC member who operates an SEC registered service-disabled veteran broker dealer, GX2 Systems LLC, a fintech software development company that engineers electronic trading solutions for the fixed income and futures markets, and GX2 Spread Markets LLC, a FINRA, SIPC and NFA boutique broker dealer offering a fully hosted aggregation and spread execution platform as a service for US Treasuries and Futures.
ZeroBeta is a technology solutions provider for capital markets specializing in risk, collateral, and market data management, with over two decades of successful business and technology transformation experience. We offer cloud-native, real-time risk & collateral management for multiple asset classes and cater to the varied requirements of capital markets participants ranging from buy-side and sell-side firms to market infrastructure providers. Our platform supports traditional and digital assets and their derivatives while providing market participants the tools to efficiently compute margin and collateral requirements, simulate stress events, and optimize their clearing, risk, and settlement workflows. Our expertise in technology transformation and our platform's flexibility allow us to dramatically shorten the time-to-market of our solutions, achieving a twelvefold acceleration compared to legacy technology.
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